'playtab' is a perl program that generates PostScript to print the
chords of songs.
Important: This is a 'snapshot' release. I've been using it for
several years now with much pleasure but your mileage may vary.
The input for playtab is plain ASCII. It contains the chords, the
division in bars, with optional annotations.
An example:
!t Blue Bossa
Bossanova
=
| c-9 ... | f-9 ... | d% . g7 . | c-9 ... |
| es-9 . as6 . | desmaj7 ... | d% . g7 . | c-9 . d% g7 |
The first line, '!t' denotes the title of the song. Each song must
start with a title line.
The title line may be followed by '!s', a subtitle, for example to
indicate the composer.
The text "Bossanova" is printed below the title and subtitle.
The "=" indicates some vertical space.
The next lines show the bars of the song. In the first bar is the c-9
chord (Cminor9), followed by three dots. The dots indicate that this
chord is repeated for all 4 beats of this bar. In the 3rd bar each
chord take two beats: d5% (d half dim), a dot, g7 and another dot.
Run playtab with "-h" or "--help" for the syntax of chords.
If you use "=" followed by some text, the printout is indented and the
text sticks out to the left. With this you can tag groups of bars, for
example the parts of a song that must be played in a certain order.
For example:
!t Donna Lee
!s Charlie Parker
Order: A B A B
= A
| as . | f7 . | bes7 . | bes7 . |
| bes-7 . | es7 . | as . | es-7 D7 |
| des . | des-7 . | as . | f7 . |
| bes7 . | bes7 . | bes-7 . | es7 . |
= B
| as . | f7 . | bes7 . | bes7 . |
| c7 . | c7 . | f- . | c7#9 . |
| f- . | c7 . | f- . | aso . |
| as f7 | bes-7 es7 | as - | bes-7 es7 |
You can modify the width of the bars with a '!w' control. Standard
width of a beat is 30. '!w +5' increases the width to 35. '!w 25' sets
it to 25. You get the idea. You can also change the height with '!h'
(default is 15) and margin with '!m' (default width is 40).
Look at the examples, that is (currently) the best way to get grip on
what the program does.
Oh, I almost forgot: it can print guitar chord diagrams as well.
See "bluebossa", "sophisticatedlady" and some others.
If you are a LilyPond adept, it can accept chord specifications the
LilyPond way as well.
Have fun, and let me know your ideas!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johan Vromans jvromans@squirrel.nl
Squirrel Consultancy Exloo, the Netherlands
http://www.squirrel.nl http://johan.vromans.org
PGP Key 1024D/1298C2B4 http://johan.vromans.org/pgpkey.html
----------------------- "Arms are made for hugging" ------------------------